Cities for Energy Beings

Dear Diary,

Yes, I know, I keep telling you it'll be days, and I keep lying.  Sorry, but not really.

Tonight I went to 15th & John on Capitol Hill.  When I was housed there, the dry cleaners near that corner were my preferred spot to get alterations made because I'm so very short.  They close early these days, so I'll have to find another place, but anyway, while I was there I saw that Williams Place, the tiny park between that cleaning shop and the Safeway at that corner, was fenced in with orange netting.

I can't find any record of a sweep at Williams Place more recent than this summer.  So perhaps I was wrong about City Hall Park.  Perhaps it'll get the promised renovations but the fences will never go away, punishment upon the whole city for tolerating homeless people.  Beats me.  But I'm pretty sure that would be an extremely unpopular approach at Woodland Park.

Anyway, my next errand took me to Northgate, so I went back to the light rail stop.  And a preacher had taken up on the platform.  He wasn't preaching the Gospel, as usual; nor was he preaching the evils of masks and vaccines, though his mask was only covering his chin.

Nope, his text was the barrenness of the platform we were all on.  "You all voted to spend billions of dollars to build this place, and now you all use this place, and it hasn't got a single trash can or restroom."  Well, dear Diary, that's the PG-rated version suitable for your ears.

I remember reading that Sound Transit had decided that it would start considering how to serve material human beings by installing restrooms in a mere matter of months - hundreds of months, that is, sometime in the 2030s.  They seem to have accelerated that schedule, for which fact they'd deserve credit except that it's still mind-boggling that they've spent billions to build a rail system without restrooms and trash cans in the first place!

As I passed the preacher, instead of just saying "Yea, brother!" as I probably should have, I commented that Seattle is for energy beings, and we humans just live in it.  I also mentioned that I'd been writing about public restrooms for more than a year.  He was having none of it, in fact thought I was mocking him.  Oops.

But no.  This morning I risked being late to work to finish reading No Place to Go:  How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, by Lezlie Lowe, Toronto:  Coachhouse Books, c2018.  I should probably review the book for you, dear Diary, at some point, but for now I just want to note something the (Canadian) author returns to throughout the book.  The UK used to have thousands of public restrooms.  As of her writing, about half of those had been closed in the previous decade, thanks to the austerities of a series of Conservative prime ministers.  Seattle isn't the only city increasingly meant for energy beings; it's just the one I happen to live in.

I have reason to believe that Seattle's hatred for public restrooms is greatly exaggerated, and is led by the city government, not by public opinion.  But it wasn't the city government that put up this sign, seen later that evening behind a row of benches near Northgate, it was a would-be energy being:

Why put up benches in the first place, if you're going to tell everyone who considers sitting on them not to loiter?  As a decoration?  As a cheap way to pretend to contribute to the public good?

If we want to take this city, let alone all cities, back from the energy beings, and return them to human liveability, we will need people like that preacher.  I'm pretty sure his rhetorical purpose was simply to insult his hearers, who were starting to heckle him back by the time my train came.  We'll need preachers who try to convince their hearers instead, and we'll need them in hundreds here alone, thousands or millions worldwide.  We will, eventually, need thousands just here, to march and strike and do the other things that people have to do to get attention from energy beings.

For all that my photo has been on a newspaper's front page, I don't have remotely enough voice to make that happen myself, nor am I enough of a people person, frankly.  But I will watch for opportunities to join, and contribute my talents and whatever money I can spare to, any group I think has a decent chance of making it happen.

You are, I suppose, literally an energy being yourself, dear Diary.  I'm sorry, but your emulators among the human species are making trouble all over.  Please do what you can to discourage their foolish ambitions.  Meanwhile, good night, and good hours until we meet again, whenever that is.